


The Crushing Loneliness of a Vanilla Cupcake

by LizzyLovesPink



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, Dangan Ronpa 3: The End of 希望ヶ峰学園 | The End of Kibougamine Gakuen | End of Hope's Peak High School, Dangan Ronpa Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magic, Author is experimenting with this kind of style, Based off The Particular Sadness Of Lemon Cake, But you don’t need to read the book at all to get this, Canon Compliant, Childhood to Adulthood, Cross-Posted on FanFiction.Net, Fluff and Angst, Food, Gen, Happy Ending, Magic Powers, Magic Realism, One-Shot, Present Tense, Surreal, emojis, flowery language, food imagery, sibling relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-23
Updated: 2020-07-23
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:02:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25473577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LizzyLovesPink/pseuds/LizzyLovesPink
Summary: Komaru Naegi is six years old when she discovers she can taste other’s emotions.Inspired by the novel The Particular Sadness Of Lemon CakeAlso on FanFiction.net
Relationships: Fukawa Touko/Naegi Komaru, Kirigiri Kyoko/Naegi Makoto(Implied), Naegi Komaru & Asahina Aoi, Naegi Komaru & Naegi Makoto
Comments: 7
Kudos: 72





	The Crushing Loneliness of a Vanilla Cupcake

Komaru Naegi is six years old when she realizes she can taste emotions. She had always been a normal girl, a regular girl, with two completely normal parents, a completely normal older brother, and even a completely normal dog. They ate and watched TV together and she attended the same elementary school as her brother. They practically do everything together, which is why it doesn’t surprise her when he comes home from school that day with a cupcake. 

She’s in bed sick and misses school as a result, but he tells her he snagged the cupcake from a classmate’s birthday party and hid it all the way home. It’s warm and smushed but Komaru takes a big bite anyway, tasting strawberry icing and vanilla cake mix. Underneath that, though, she also tastes the bitter blackness of utter desperation, strong and choking. She gasps and clutches at her shirt, feeling ready to punch the wall or tug on her hair or even just choke the cupcake back up. The feeling coils and swirls around in her throat until she swallows it back down. 

She quickly tells Makoto he can eat the rest; she _is_ sick, after all. 

🧁🧁🧁🧁🧁

She’s nine when the family dog dies; Taro, a medium-sized Shiba Inu that was extremely fluffy and friendly. For a few days she’s convinced he hasn’t entirely passed on yet, and even manages to convince her parents to have a small but meaningful funeral for him in their yard. It’s sad for everyone involved, but Komaru doesn’t truly break down into sobs until that dinner and she takes a bite out of the beef stew Daddy cooked. It tastes of pure, unadulterated sorrow, sadness that’s so deep she can barely manage to swim back up before drowning. She covers her face and cries. 

“He was a friend to us all, wasn’t he?” Daddy pats her head and holds her close as she cries. She manages to look up at his face and sees nothing but a bright smile. 

🍛🍛🍛🍛🍛

She’s twelve when Makoto is accepted into Hope’s Peak Academy and everyone celebrates. She only sees him for holidays, but she finds she's okay with that. While he’s gone, she practices and learns more about her ability. She still eats; of course, but has learned to take smaller bites so the emotion doesn’t overwhelm her. And she observes. She observes how sometimes Makoto brings his classmates over to study and laughs awkwardly and shuffles away when the more social ones try to grab his arm or playfully nudge him. Komaru wonders. She wonders if any of his classmates cook or bake. 

One day he brings home a slice of cake he says he couldn’t finish and offers it to her. 

“A classmate of mine baked this,” 

It’s chocolate with purple frosting and Komaru takes a small bite as usual, knowing anything bigger than that is asking for trouble. Beneath the plastic-tasting eggs, the unpasteurized milk, and rich chocolate she tastes the salty tears of sensitivity and cowardice, the sweat and nerves of a liar, the bitter taste of envy and lust, the sour awkwardness of puberty, and most of all, the crushing, crushing, inescapable weight of reality and expectations, yet also a very faint glimmer of determination. She swallows the cake down to the best of her ability and finds herself fighting back tears, trembling. 

“Who made this?” She chokes out the question. 

“Fujisaki-chan, isn’t she a good baker?” He answers eagerly. 

Komaru had seen the girl once or twice before; a bright and happy girl if a bit shy. She feels sick suddenly. 

🍰🍰🍰🍰🍰

She’s fifteen when she attends Hope’s Peak for family day, eating little due to her excitement. The only thing she’s eaten is a small parfait made by Sayaka Maizono herself; it tastes of fresh fruit and cream alongside glowing ambition, warmness, and slight ecstasy that almost makes her drunk. 

She sits by herself in the cafeteria, fiddling with her jacket when suddenly a blonde model walks over and slams a bowl of ramen in front of her. 

“I made it for Big Sis but she totes hated it. You look like her so you can have it! It’s super good!”

Komaru manages to eat half of the ramen before her stomach suddenly flips and she vomits profusely, gasping and collapsing on the floor, going into convulsions. Everyone around her starts screaming for medical help and even the model is shocked and insists she didn’t do it, saying her sister ate it and was just fine. 

Maybe that was true, but in that bowl Komaru tasted nothing but sheer despair; salty and cold and heavy all at once.

🍜🍜🍜🍜🍜

She’s sixteen when the food finally loses its taste; it’s all factory-made and thus metallic, cold, and unfeeling. She knows it’s due to the apocalypse, and supposes she should be grateful, but to her, it feels as though the heart itself is missing from food. 

Just this morning she’s had a simple breakfast of bacon and eggs she was sent; already-made and just needing heating. It tasted of metal and rust, no soul nor distance to be found at all. She sees her power as something that’s a part of her, something that helps her understand people better, and to lose it was like losing the ability to eat almost. Despite this, she still eats; every so often tasting buckwheat noodles from Tokyo or sushi from Yamaguchi or tea from Akihabara, but it never compares to the raw emotion of food she used to eat. 

🍳🍳🍳🍳🍳

She’s still sixteen when Touko makes a sandwich for her; it’s stale with dry ingredients, anyone normal would be able to taste that, but it still makes her sob and smile because she tastes the sourness of being an outcast, the boiling anger at the world, and the small sweetness of having found a new friend. They finally have a brief moment to themselves despite the world falling apart and all the chaos, and even though she’s sitting in a damp alleyway in a too-tight uniform and eating a sandwich that’s out-of-date, she still finds herself smiling. 

The sandwich is certainly better than the candy the children often give her; mainly as a joke or because they’ve unknowingly dropped some, that tastes overly-saccharine and processed and fills her with both limited energy and a mischievous mind. This one feels far more personal and real. 

“I-If my food t-tastes bad, you can j-just say it! I know I’m a horrible cook!” 

Komaru just smiles more. If only she knew. 

🥪🥪🥪🥪🥪

She’s eighteen when she’s promoted and decides to work in Thirteenth Division, restoring grocery stores and restaurants around the country. Maybe it’s a sort of irony she can’t catch. Aoi has been promoted to serving as her boss, and the two get along quite swimmingly. Only they laugh at that dumb joke. 

Aoi has learned to make doughnuts from scratch herself; starting from the wheat and ending up with doughnuts so good they looked store-bought. She makes them for Komaru once and to her, they taste like sorrow and regret and aching loneliness, but also her usual cheer and hopefulness. They come in a variety of different icings and sprinkles and some are even filled with jelly or cream. 

Komaru likes Aoi’s doughnuts. 

🍩🍩🍩🍩🍩

She’s twenty when she comes across an old recipe in the kitchen, written in what she later learns from asking Kyoko is the handwriting of a woman named Ruruka Andoh. She reads through it and learns it’s a recipe for candy; what she considers to be her best recipe ever. Curious, she makes the candy for herself; small chewy bites of fruit with a hint of a creamy inside, and then she pops one into her mouth. 

Pride and anger erupt like magma into her mouth, which makes her pucker. Beneath that is the soft and subtle taste of regret, and she collapses to her knees and whispers an apology. Maybe some things are better off left alone.

🍬🍬🍬🍬🍬

She’s twenty-one when a former Remnant of Despair offers to test her ability out with her. Komaru is still curious and thus allows him to do so. He rounds up as many members of his old class as are willing and makes them all make cereal for her using a variety of different methods. She tastes anger, regret, liars, sadness, regality, passion, determination, love, care, and loneliness, as well as the overarching taste of loss. They take notes and can’t hide their fascination. Komaru herself can’t just taste emotions, but also the ingredients and where they came from. She always has, she knows this. When she was younger, she even experimented a bit with it herself, curious and fascinated by it. It’s just that to her, emotions have always tasted far stronger than any cooking method or utensil. 

🥛🥛🥛🥛🥛

She’s twenty-three when Makoto confesses to her that he always avoided touching people throughout most of his life due to the fact he could feel their emotions through their skin. He admits that’s why he was initially drawn to Kyoko, because they could hold hands and her inner feelings would still remain a mystery, and Makoto found he liked that.

”Does it run in our family? Sensing other’s emotions through our senses?” She asks, but he only shrugs. 

“Maybe, maybe not. Mom and Dad never told us. Though I guess we did a good job of hiding it, huh?” 

She then decides to become more adamant in her cooking and using it as an outlet to pour her emotions into. She tries that very night by making some simple balls of rice with seaweed wrapped on the bottom, feeling encouraged and determined all at once. She offers them to some of her branch-mates. 

“Not very good, try again,”

”They almost have a distracted quality to them,”

”You’ve never cooked before, have you?” 

Yet somehow her spirit remains strong. 

🍙🍙🍙🍙🍙 

She’s twenty-five when her niece and nephew; twins, celebrate their twelfth birthdays. She decides to make a cake for the occasion and buys the best ingredients she can find. Rich chocolate, thick white cream, fluffy vanilla icing, plump juicy strawberries, and a cute candy piece sporting their names. She can’t wipe the large smile off her face that forms as she dances around the kitchen and makes it. 

At the party, even the adult guests take small pieces from the cake to eat and all of them proclaim they feel like they’re floating on air. 

🎂🎂🎂🎂🎂

She’s twenty-nine when Touko confesses her love to her and gingerly holds out her hands; Komaru gently takes them and squeezes, feeling blushy and awkward. 

“Asahina-chan told me a-about your power,” 

“Hm? What power?”

”Y-You can taste people’s emotions in the food they make...if I-I has known sooner, I would’ve made you taste something of Byakuya-sama’s-!”

Komaru giggles. “It doesn’t really work like that,”

”W-Why are you so pleased with being so w-weird? It’s so intimate a-and gross, knowing so much about people,” 

She shrugs and suggests they watch an old movie from their childhoods. Komaru pops some average microwave popcorn and it tastes buttery and airy as she expects. Touko leans over every so often and sneaks some. They spend the rest of the night sleeping on each other’s shoulders long after the movie has ended and the popcorn is eaten. 

🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿

She’s thirty-one when she finally realizes a lot of her emotional moments in her life had simply been her reacting to the various emotions she always felt in food. When she was younger, she always felt in the back of her mind that her power would either slowly weaken or just disappear completely as she got older, but she now realizes the opposite was true. The older she became, the stronger her power seemed to get. She can taste emotions, locations, methods. She can pour her own emotions into the food she makes herself. 

For the anniversary last week, the survivors agreed on a potluck of sorts where they made a piece of food inspired by someone who had passed. Komaru finally decides on making cheeseburgers in honor of Leon; Makoto had told her once he liked them and she figured Kanon would appreciate the sentiment as well. 

She arrives a bit late to the feast but proudly displays a platter of burgers with cheese, tomato, lettuce, onion, ketchup, mustard, and mayo on top. Only a few eat them, intimidated by the size, but the ones who do speak of the detached sorrow she had while cooking. She knew to be sad, but not deeply. She just shrugs. Live and learn.

🍔🍔🍔🍔🍔

She’s thirty-five when she finally decides to make the world a better place with her food. Every little thing she cooks, no matter what, is flourished with her good attitude and charming smile. Everyone who eats her food says they can practically taste the passion and cheer of the cook herself. 

She sits on the roof with Makoto, sharing a scoop of vanilla ice-cream, swinging her legs back-and-forth, just like the old days. She wonders why she never suggested for Makoto to wear gloves. He wonders why she never asked for a follow-up surgery after her appendicitis procedure to have her mouth removed. They both dealt with their powers, they supposed. She leaned against him.

”I read some old records from Hope’s Peak. Turns out there was a student there one year who always wore a sickness mask because they could smell people’s intentions,”

”Really? You think they're related to us?”

”Maybe,” He has grey in his hair and walks slower, but when he shrugs and smiles she sees the younger form of him. She finishes the ice-cream. 

“It tastes like one of those old dairy farms they used to have in Hokkaido,” She says simply, looking up at the sky. The stars are out and illuminate the violet-blue sky beautifully. 

🍦🍦🍦🍦🍦

She’s thirty-nine when she realizes she wouldn’t have had things any other way.

🍽🍽🍽🍽🍽


End file.
